I received an email yesterday telling me that I won a random drawing at Abbey of the Arts. I was one of 430 people who submitted my "word for the year" (see below) and Christine (the Abbess) notified me that I won my choice of one of three of her online courses. I am thrilled and, in light of my word for the year, have chosen this course:
You can see the info on the courses and other prizes at this link.
My word for the year was WINDOW, for several reasons.
* I am newly in an office with glorious windows, and it's improved my outlook and productivity amazingly. After 2 years away from natural light, I feel like I'm being nourished all day long.
* After a tough year with Ken's illness, I am trying to see where I am going. I am looking through windows I have not encountered before, and seeing things I didn't plan on. Many of the windows are still opaque; I don't know what is behind them.
* The windows in my home are very challenging to clean. They are old and fragile and mostly painted shut (boo) due to the speed with which we painted to make the house habitable when we moved in. In Texas, we mostly don't have "open window days," but there are some...and I want to get those windows unstuck and be able to open them.
* The windows in the house also have storm windows on them (which is good, because they are in no way an effective barrier to the elements on their own), but getting those storm windows down to clean them is a heck of a job.
* Thinking about cleaning windows reminded me of what the young Felix says to the young Katherine in Madeleine L'Engle's The Small Rain, explaining his description of himself as a "window cleaner:"
"We're all shut up in rooms. Everybody. And nobody can ever get in to anybody else's room. That's because we've got bodies. And the only way we can have contact with people is through the windows in our rooms. . . And some people have more windows than others. And everybody's windows get dirty. So there need to be window cleaners."
(Felix goes on to become a bishop, by the way. At this point in the narrative, that would have been laughable to all concerned. So, you see, we never know.)
* I want to clean my own windows. In some way in this world, perhaps I can help others clean their windows. I don't expect it to be easy. But I expect it to be important. Thank you, Christine!
